Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the alternatives? Back every store up to a rail line?
Localize manufacturing for one.
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Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
151–160 of 328 posts
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fishing can be done sustainably, and is in some fisheries.
That's definitely a claim but I assure you no human being has a clue of how to manage the ocean - it's kind of ludicrous. And by the fact that the ocean is so large, it industrial fishing is notoriously impossible to regulate - meaning that even if you "fish sustainably", it doesn't really matter - a large part of the market remains and will remain unregulated, by nature.
That’s a bit excessive. No human knows how to manage fish populations?
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#153100 million pounds of lost gear by the fishing industry is such a ridiculous underestimate that, judging by some of the comments here, make people believe this number to be somehow OK. The fishing industry has been dodging responsibility for ocean pollution and habitat destruction for forever, good to see more research that people can use to put pressure on them to actually give a s** and change their ways.
The crazy part about this is how this is the fishermen shitting where they are eating. All of the ocean pollution contributes directly to collapsing fish populations, which puts them right out of a job. Why doesn't the appeal of "if you keep doing what you're doing you won't be able to keep fishing, and your children definitely won't be fishermen" work? I get that they are trapped in the cycle of overfishing, but it…
> it seems like cutting back on the pollution is a first step everybody could take.
Just a simple tragedy of the commons I guess. The obvious steps towards sustainable fishing involves either higher cost or lower yields in the short-medium term. The few who would be willing to would go out of business. Since fish don't generally respect borders, the same dilemma occurs even between countries. If you voluntary give up your yield, other countries get more.
The only way I know to solve this is to properly price externalities, Milton Friedman style.
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#154To place this in context, it's 50,000 tons/year of fishing waste, versus 200,000 tons/year of microplastics from car tires: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre... Further, microplastics enter the ecosystem far easier than the bulky big plastic from fishing gear, so the tire microplastics should be far more concerning to people. It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. Try to live a…
This is just a silly red herring - the two issues are not mutually exclusive and addressing the one does not detract from addressing the other. Can someone help me understand why people think that thinking this way is productive, or intelligent, or… anything positive? I truly do not understand it at all. On so many articles the top/highly rated comments are just variations of ‘oh, but this other thing is even worse!’ Why is that?
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%
What is freshwater usage? My water comes out of a Great Lake and substantially ends up back in it, about as clean as it came out. It's not used up. Some energy is consumed making it potable and pumping it around, and then treating it. Farms in the Midwest happen to catch a lot of rain, are they using freshwater in a different way than an almond orchard in California, or is it the same (my expectation is that the almo…
I would not underestimate the hypothesis that a lake can be screwed up too, consider what happened to the aral sea.
Near my home town a big volcanic lake has been used to get water during droughts and it got to a dangerous low level in recent years.
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#156100 million pounds of lost gear by the fishing industry is such a ridiculous underestimate that, judging by some of the comments here, make people believe this number to be somehow OK. The fishing industry has been dodging responsibility for ocean pollution and habitat destruction for forever, good to see more research that people can use to put pressure on them to actually give a s** and change their ways.
The crazy part about this is how this is the fishermen shitting where they are eating. All of the ocean pollution contributes directly to collapsing fish populations, which puts them right out of a job. Why doesn't the appeal of "if you keep doing what you're doing you won't be able to keep fishing, and your children definitely won't be fishermen" work? I get that they are trapped in the cycle of overfishing, but it…
A lot of fishers where I live blame the damage on previous generations. They aren’t the problem, it was the people before them. They talk about how sustainable their practices are (despite stocks decreasing every year).
We had massive glass sponge reefs. They were destroyed by trawlers. That’s prohibited now. I suppose we’re expected to believe the industry wouldn’t be trawling today if they were allowed to, but I don’t buy it. Although the glass sponges were nurseries for untold millions of fish and their prey, and those stocks are so incredibly depleted and unable to recover, they still fish every single bit of quota they can and fight tooth and nail to increase quotas. Many complain that they aren’t allowed to trawl, too.
I suppose what it comes down to is that everyone thinks they are the exception. Even our meat eating practices on land are so resource intensive and absurd, but no one things they are complicit in an activity like what we’re seeing with fishing. None of this is sustainable, but we’re all participating and all very sure it’s someone else’s fault.
Really, sustainable fishing at our population scale seems like an absurd notion.
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why arguments that road-maintenance taxes should be applied to BEVs and bicycles are horseshit. Everything lighter than 4,000 pounds is essentially a rounding error as far as damage to road surface goes.
Wouldn't this in effect add a regressive tax to staple products like bread and flour, which are transported by trucks and would require raised prices to be passed on? I'd be interested in seeing the numbers and what price rise if any would be expected.
Transportation is quite cheap per loaf of bread. You can make it substantially more expensive without affecting the retail price by more than a cent or two.
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's definitely a claim but I assure you no human being has a clue of how to manage the ocean - it's kind of ludicrous. And by the fact that the ocean is so large, it industrial fishing is notoriously impossible to regulate - meaning that even if you "fish sustainably", it doesn't really matter - a large part of the market remains and will remain unregulated, by nature.
That’s a bit excessive. No human knows how to manage fish populations?
We aren’t managing to do it yet. Even here in Beautiful British Columbia, Canada, we are doing an abysmal job and constantly shifting goal posts to claim we’re succeeding.
I used to believe it until I began reading salmon reports and various population studies for species like rockfish and lingcod, key commercial species.
Our definition of sustainable is essentially “not completely shitting the bed”.
We’re supposed to be a model of sustainability. I don’t have much faith.
We’re also talking about sustaining populations that have already been decimated in the last 150 years. Let’s not pretend the numbers we’re trying to hit resemble anything like healthy.
It’s an incredible disservice to ourselves and future generations to pretend industry standards for sustainability are anything more than an excuse to squeeze more juice out of a dried up fruit.
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#159Patagonia sells a few items are are made from recycled fishing nets. I have a hat and swim trunks made from it.
They also sell apparel treated with pfoas/pfas which are gradually polluting the ocean more and more, indefinitely.
Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%
Water shortage isn't a real environmental issue. It's a result of people building enough water production capacity for most of their needs but not too much excess for peaks. We can simply buy more fresh water if we want more. And of course it's renewable so there's no long term value in trying to reduce usage.
Huh? water usage is a huge environmental issue. Only people far upstream really can say it’s not. We are amazing at not only diverting freshwater from streams and rivers, we’re also really good at pumping it out of the ground and diverting aquifer water from reaching downstream as well. While fresh water is largely renewable, it’s not like it’s an infinite resource and it’s very hard to see the long term effects of changes we’re making to our water shed. To say there’s no long term value in trying to reduce water usage is just wrong in much of the world. Worse, is drying up rivers and swamps can have an exascerbating effect. Dry soil doesn’t hold water nearly as well as wet soil, and results in greater risks of flooding from what would otherwise be typical rain patterns in an area.